


Recognise Me

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, History, Mindwipes, Red Room, Theoretical Backgrounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6579946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nat - Natasha - doesn’t remember Bucky, but sometimes Natalia in the back of her mind remembers the American. Remembers the hulking man with the metal arm who’d been there during her last few years in the Red Room, training all of them that had survived that long to be still more vicious and deadly.</p><p>He was an empty creature, a puppet, but still, somehow, a person. He was someone against whom a Widow’s tricks would not work. He was someone they would have to fight.</p><p>Natasha doesn’t remember him but Natalia, hidden in the back of her skull with the single wrist handcuffed to the bedpost does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recognise Me

**Author's Note:**

> **Note:** Bucky being called the American in the Red Room is explained [Here](http://fuckyeahbuckynatasha.tumblr.com/post/82810995583/when-the-winter-soldier-trained-natalia-in-the-red), [Here](http://wintergaydar.tumblr.com/post/71487710917/hello-class-today-i-would-like-to-tell-you-why) and [Here](http://uminoko.tumblr.com/post/79919414478/call-me-by-my-true-name-russian-naming). (Latter two are linked from the first one).

Nat - Natasha - doesn’t remember Bucky, but sometimes Natalia in the back of her mind remembers the American. Remembers the hulking man with the metal arm who’d been there during her last few years in the Red Room, training all of them that had survived that long to be still more vicious and deadly.

He was an empty creature, a puppet, but still, somehow, a person. He was someone against whom a Widow’s tricks would not work. He was someone they would have to fight.

Natasha doesn’t remember him but Natalia, hidden in the back of her skull with the single wrist handcuffed to the bedpost does.

Sometimes, when she’s spent hours picking away at the wiped over memories of the Red Room - sections washed away or whitewashed over to hide her history - she gets more. Sometimes she remembers talking to the American, the odd bland words offered back.

Natasha doesn’t remember Bucky but she remembers the Winter Soldier, the metal arm glinting under star-and-moonlight as her stomach ached with the bullet that had gone through her, killing the analyst.

Just a story, she had thought.

(Natalia had woken up in the back of her skull that night, reminded her of the American, the empty man with the metal arm, and she woke knowing, down to her bones, that he Winter Soldier was real.)

Natasha remembers only what Natalia does of the American, remembers the Russian that sometimes had an accent, remembers the eyes that sometimes recognised people, the instinctual fighting that never paused, never changed.

When she sees the Winter Soldier in the street, sees him walking, sees him shooting she _knows_.

This is not the Captain’s lost Bucky. This is the Winter Soldier. This is the American in his day job.

(Unstoppable, unhesitating, deadly. She cannot use her tricks on him.)

But he sees Steve and he halts. He pauses. He _hesitates_.

In her mind the line had already been drawn: American-Winter Soldier. Now she adds another line: Bucky-the American-Winter Soldier. She doesn’t dare think how many mindwipes, how many layers there is to this man. She knows hers, the Natalia of childhood, sculpted to the Black Widow, remade by her own will her own choice into Natasha Romanoff. But this? This American, this Winter Soldier, this Bucky. Bucky, remade to... to the American? To the Winter Soldier? And then remade again. 

(And, for all she knows, remade again, and again, and again. She can see the surface of the mindwipes in her memory, painted and plastered over, chipboard slowly rotting away, wallpaper peeling off with time. But this... wiped and wiped and wiped again. How many layers would have to be shed before he was the Captain’s Bucky again? Would he ever be?)

She knows Bucky-the American-Winter Soldier should recognise her. Bucky from when she fought him on the freeway. The American from the Red Room. Winter Soldier from the analyst’s death.

(She can see, in his face, how they are all bleeding together, Winter Soldier-the American-Bucky, layer after layer, sinking back to the origin, to the beginning. For her, Natalia has always been in the back of her mind, a being barely begun, destroyed before being given a chance to blossom. Such is not the case with him. He was Bucky just as long as he was the American, as he was the Winter Soldier. He does not have clear cut lines. He only has confusion.)

“You could at least recognise me,” she hisses when he pins her, tries to choke out her life.

(She is stronger than this, she has been choked by him before.)

He could at least recognise her, three people within him, all of whom have seen her. Three people within him, blurring, merging into one.

 _You could at least recognise me_ , she thinks, for mixed and confused as he is he should have as many memories of her as of Bucky’s Steve.

 _You could at least recognise me_ , she thinks, and massages her aching throat.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
